Examine two factors influencing bystanderism



Using one or more Research Studies, Explain Cross-Cultural Differences in Prosocial Behaviour.

There are cross-cultural differences in many prosocial behaviors, such as helping behavior. One study that investigated cross-cultural differences in helping behavior was Levine et al. (1990).

In the 1990s, Levine et al. conducted studies in order to measure helping behavior in 36 American cities and 23 large cities around the world. The field experiments used simple staged non-emergency situations, such as dropping a pen, helping a blind person across a busy intersection, providing someone with change, to stamp an addressed letter that has been dropped.

One finding of the studies were that population density seemed to play a role in helping behavior. In fact, it was the best predictor of helping behavior. People tended to be more helpful in small and medium-sized cities in the southern United States compared to large North-eastern and West coast cities. Explanations for the increase in anti-social behavior in areas with a high population density may be an over-load of stimuli which makes it more difficult to recognize that a person is in need of help, or deindividuation factors such as pluralistic ignorance or diffusion of responsibility. It may also be that the population in larger cities is more atomized or individualistic. In such cities, people stick to small in-groups such as family and friends, and do not care so much for other people, whereas in smaller cities there is less anonymity and a stronger sense of community.

The studies did not find a clear relationship between the individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Individualistic societies are oriented to the individual whereas as collectivistic societies give higher priority to the welfare of the collective. Although there was a slight overall tendency for big cities in individualistic countries to be less helpful, there were several exceptions to the rule. Levine et al. speculates that this is because of the vagueness of the collectivism-individualism construct. This construct does not make clear predictions about behavior towards out-group members, or whether pedestrians will be categorized as such. Some studies have argued that collectivist societies focus less on outsiders, which may actually make them less helpful than individualistic societies. It is likely that there are many subtypes of collectivist and individualist societies. Individualist and collectivist societies that emphasize social responsibility, such as Sweden, Denmark, Austria and countries in Latin America may be more helpful. This hypothesis is supported by the findings.

Other findings may be of interest. There was a negative correlation between helping behavior and the economic situation of the city. Cities with low purchasing power per capita tended to be more helpful than cities with high purchasing power per capita. Helping rates were also higher in cities where people were less stressed (as measured by the average walking speeds) In addition the findings suggested that people tended to conform to the cultural norms of the area they live in. This means that South Americans were less helpful in New York and New Yorkers more helpful in Rio de Janeiro. As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

In conclusion, the findings demonstrate that cross-cultural differences in helping depend on a multitude of factors; such as cultural norms, population density, economic factors, and stress levels.

Examine two Factors Influencing Bystanderism

Bystanderism can be defined as not helping someone who is in need of help even though one is able to. (Soo Hoo, 2004) Bystanderism can be considered to be an anti-social behavior, in contrast to helping behavior, which is prosocial. One type of bystanderism is the bystander effect which is when people do not offer help in emergency situations while other people are present. The effect of social influence on bystanderism was first hypothesized in 1964 after the famous case of Kitty Genovese. Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of 38 witnesses over a period of 35 minutes, yet no one interfered or called the police.

Two factors that have been suggested to influence the bystander effect are pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility. Pluralistic ignorance, first coined by Catz and Allport in 1931 is a situation where the majority of group members think that other people have accepted a norm while they privately reject it. It is a type of conformity, in which people look how other act in order to decide on how to react. In the case of bystander effect, pluralistic ignorance may be a factor. Even though individuals may have a desire to help, they choose to conform to the group norm of bystanderism. Diffusion of responsibility is a phenomenon that occurs in large sized groups. In such groups people there may be unclear who is responsible for action, and people are also more anonymous. In larger groups there is therefore a tendency of individuals to refrain from responsibility and to expect or believe that others are responsible. In the case of the bystander effect, people may think that other people have already helped, or that someone that someone more competent than them should help.

Due to the diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance, it follows that the bystander effect should increase with the number of people present. This has also been demonstrated in a number of experiments conducted by Latané and Darley. In one experiment subjects were told to wait in a room before participating in an experiment. When the female experimenter left the room, participants heard her fall and cry out loud in the next room. Then everything went quiet. The participants were more likely to react more often and more quickly when they were alone than if they were sitting with a stooge who was showing no sign to offer help and did not react to the noise.

Latane and Darley’s controlled experiments strongly support the hypothesis that helping behavior is affected by the number of people present in a laboratory setting, but there are problems with the external validity of the findings. Younger children do not seem to be affected by group size when helping, at least not if they come in pairs. In a study by Staub in 1988 kindergarten and first grade children were more likely to respond to sounds of distress in an adjoining room when they were in pairs rather than alone. This may be because children are more open about their inner feelings and feel stronger when they collaborate while helping. At the moment, there are no studies on the bystander effect in larger groups of children.

Another limitation of the findings is that some field experiments have failed to demonstrate the effect of group size on bystanderism in real life situations. In a classic study by Piliavin, Rodin, & Piliavin (1969) confederates acted as strangers in need of help in the New York subway. The confederates either acted as men with canes who appeared ill or drunk. While they faked falling unconsciously to the floor of the subway car other researchers measured the speed of help from people present in the subway car. The results did not find any differences in group size and the help was almost instant in most cases. People were faster in helping the cane victim than the drunken victim. The helper tended to be of the same ethnicity of the victim and as observed in many other studies on emergency situations, men were more likely to help compared to women.

There are some methodological problems with Piliavin’s, Rodin’s, and Piliavin’s study which may weaken the conclusions that can be drawn from it. Firstly, it is possible that the sample was not representative, as it was a sample of opportunity. Secondly, the study may have a possible experimenter bias, as the gathered data was observational. However, the sample size of the study was 4,450 participants, which limits the possibility of a sample bias. Furthermore, two independent observers were used during the encoding of data, which included many quantitative measures.

The findings of Piliavin’s, Rodin’s and Piliavin’s study hint that there are many factors affecting helping behavior. Identification with the victim is one possible factor, and the perception of emergency is another one. Some of Latané’s and Darley’s experiment included a degree of ambiguity whether the person actually needed help. The same was true during the murder of Kitty Genovese. One witness, for instance, claimed to have believed it was just a domestic quarrel (Gansberg, 1964). In the subway study, it may have been more apparent that the person was in need of help. The participants were also physically closer to the victim in Piliavin’s, Rodin’s and Piliavin’s subway study compared to participants in Latane’s and Darley’s experiments. Participants were in the same subway car as the victims in the former study whereas the latter investigations often involved a scenario with someone in need of help in adjoining rooms or booths.

Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance can be viewed as situational explanations of bystanderism. Research does however also suggest that there are dispositional factors for bystanderism. Oliner and Oliner interviewed more than 400 people who rescued Jews during World War II and compared them with 100 non rescuers. The interviews showed that rescuers seemed to have a capacity for more extensive relationships and a stronger sense of attachment to others. Therefore they also felt more responsible of the welfare for others. These norms seemed to have been taught in childhood, often from parents who displayed tolerance, care, and empathy toward their children and people different from themselves. Although Oliner’s and Oliner’s study was based on self report and therefore may have had an inbuilt response bias, the findings suggest that bystanderism is not only situational but that there also are individual differences. Because of their disposition, some people are more likely to help in emergency situations than others.

Bystanderism is an enormously complex issue and does not only depend on pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility, but also other factors such as dispositional factors, age, gender, identification with the victim, perception of emergency, and proximity to the victim. The interacting factors of helping are complex, and it is therefore still difficult to predict the likelihood of bystanderism in a certain situation, even though researchers now have some preliminary rules of the thumb.

Discuss the relative effectiveness of two strategies for reducing violence

According to the world health organization, violence can be defined as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” Examples of violence include suicide, terrorism, child abuse, rape, and bullying. Violence is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. It disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries, where it has severe economic and social impact. Every day, more than 4,000 people die because of violence. Of those killed, approximately 2,300 die by suicide and over 1,500 because of violence of another person. It is therefore essential to find strategies to reduce its impact.

One way to reduce violence is to change social and cultural norms that promote or glorify violence towards others. Many studies have shown that such norms can increase the incidence of violence. The American south, for instance, is considered to have a “culture of honor”, in which means that men do not accept insults from others or accept improper conducts against them, and are willing to resort to violent retribution in order to maintain their reputation. The American south also has a higher level of violence than the American north. This may, of course, also be due to economic differences and prevalence of guns, but if those factors are controlled, violence is still more prevalent in the south. Media can help perpetuating norms of violence. In a field experiment by Cohen and Nisbett, employers were sent letters from job applicants who had allegedly killed someone in an honor-related conflict. Southern and western companies were more likely than northern companies to respond in an understanding and cooperative way.

One way to change social and cultural norms of violence is through education. One program aimed at preventing adolescent dating violence is Safe Dates. In a study by Foshee et al. to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, fourteen schools in a rural county in the United States were randomly allocated to treatment conditions. The participants’ attitudes toward adolescent dating violence were measured through the questionnaires, before and after the program. Less psychological abuse and sexual violence was reported in the treatment than the control group. Most of these effects were explained by changes in dating violence norms, gender stereotyping and awareness of services. Even though one should be cautious of drawing too far reached conclusions of the results, as the measure was based on self report, and not actual behavior, the reduction of adolescent dating violence through education seems promising.

The evidence for the effectiveness of modifying cultural norms and values is however limited. It can also be argued that campaigns aimed at changing norms have secondary positive effects. Victims may be informed about services to get protection from violence, and offenders may be informed about treatment. Those campaigns usually also address other issues that are related to violent behavior, such as alcohol consumption. Cultural norms of violence exist in every culture, to a more or less degree, and it may not be possible to eradicate those norms completely, as our proneness for violence can have an evolutionary basis. Our violent behavior can change, however. As Stephen Pinker has demonstrated, humans are less violent now than during Stone Age, which suggests that violence also has a cultural influence. It is therefore important for media and school to be aware of their influence on norms of violence.

Another way to reduce violence is to improve social skills and enhance life opportunities for children. High levels of impulsiveness and low empathy in children and adolescents are related to acts of violence. Many treatment programs, such as cognitive behavioral skills training and social development programs, have shown to increase empathy, reduce impulsiveness, antisocial and aggressive behavior in children. These programs are also beneficial for improving pro social behavior and skills in children. They can be carried out in school settings and typically focus on managing anger, behavior modification, adopting a social perspective, moral development, building social skills, solving social problems and resolving conflicts. They can be seen as positive as they involve children in trying to solve problems related to violence. They show promise of being effective. In a systematic review of the effectiveness of these programs, children who had participated in the training had reduced their violent and delinquent with 10 percent behavior compared with controls. The most effective program was the cognitive skills behavioral training, which had an average of 25 % decrease in delinquency. Another intervention of this kind is to enhance vocational opportunities through academic enrichment programs, helping youths at a high risk level for violence to complete secondary schooling and to pursue higher education, or to provide vocational training for youths and young adults in the risk zone. While these programs show promise in reducing violence in youths and young adults, more evidence is needed to confirm that they also prevent violence and aggressive in these individuals.

These two strategies for reducing violence have many things in common. They both aim at reducing violence through intervention and education programs in youth, but whereas the first strategy focus on changing norms, the second strategy focus on changing behavior or providing better opportunities. While the first strategy seems to have an effect, the latter strategy seems to be more effective, even though more research is needed to determine their effectiveness. Current research suggests that neither of them is effective in preventing violence completely. Combined with other strategies, such as gun control and reduction of alcohol, they may nonetheless help to reduce violence.

Discuss the Effects of Short Term and Long Term Exposure to Violence

The 1990s suggested tendencies of a possible displacement in technology use for children from television to computer games and internet, but despite the introduction of the new digital media, children still watch TV regularly (Odom Pecora, Murray, & Wartella, 2007). A telephone survey on more than 1,000 parents of toddlers and preschoolers shows that 73 % of children below 6 years of age watch TV on a regular day. 43 % of all children below 2 years of age watch TV every day and 74 % of all infants and toddlers have watched TV before the age of two. On average, children watch about one hour per day. (Rideout, Vandewater & Wartella, 2003) While watching television, children risk being exposed to media violence. A content analysis study of more than 9,000 programs over three years found that approximately 60 % of the programs contain some physical aggression. On average, a typical TV hour features six different violent incidents.

As it since long common knowledge that children often imitate what they see on TV, they are likely to imitate the violence they observe. This is in line with Bandura’s social cognitive theory that emphasizes learning by imitation of models. In a classic study by Bandura, Ross, & Ross (1963), children watched video clips of adults acting aggressively toward a bobo doll. They were later observed imitating the same aggressive behavior. In a more recent study, elementary school children who were exposed to one episode of MightyMorphin Power rangers demonstrated significantly more intentional acts of aggression, such as hitting, kicking and shoving than did a group that did not watch the program. In another experiment, five- to six-year-old children who had just watched a violent movie and were then observed playing together were then rated much higher on physical assault and other types of aggression than compared to a control group.

These studies clearly demonstrate a short term effect of TV violence on behavior, but it is important to be careful of drawing too far reaching conclusions. It is important to point out that all of the aggressive behavior that the children in the studies copied from television may not have been dangerous to other children. Many children might be aware of the difference of hitting a toy and another kid. Some children, however, may have been more negatively affected by the observed violence. Violence in children’s television is also less occurring than in adult television, and as long as children are not allowed to watch adult television they may be better protected.

Children can also be frightened by violent media content. Younger children tend to be frightened by characters and events that seem frightening, whereas older children are frightened by scenes that involve injury, violence and personal harm. Older children are also more responsive than younger children to violence that seem realistic or could happen in real life. Older children, for instance, are more frightened by television news than younger children. Repeated exposure to television may also increase children’s fear of victimization. In one study, primary school children who watched the news often believed that there were more murders in a nearby city than children who did not watch the news often. The researchers controlled for grade level, gender, exposure to fictional media violence, and overall TV viewing. This effect has also been observed in adults. Realistic violence seems to have more of a detrimental effect than violence perceived as imaginary, as suggested by an experiment by Feschbach (1976)

Current research has found some support for short time effects of television violence on children, such as imitation and anxiety. It has however been difficult to establish long term effects. One longitudinal study by Eron & Huesmann (1986) found that the amount of exposure to television violence in childhood was positively related to physical aggression in adulthood. The researchers controlled for the child’s initial level of aggressiveness, IQ, parent’s education, parents’ TV habits, and parents’ aggression. Still, it is possible that children who watch more TV violence in childhood have a different disposition than those children that watch less TV violence. There is for instance no evidence that violent television increases violent crime. The introduction of television has neither been shown to increase violence. Charlton, Gunter & Hannan’s (2002) longitudinal case study on the introduction of television in the island of S:t Helena showed no increase in crime, or in violence in children. However strange it may seem to us, we live in a comparably non-violent time in history. In earlier societies, when there was no television, people were more prone to commit violent acts. Some children’s misconduct is more likely to come from less parental involvement in child rearing, and that they may leave their child in front of the television instead of interacting with him/her, instead of television violence.

As most of the research about the effect of short term and long term exposure to television is correlational or laboratory, the conclusions that can be drawn from the findings must be modest. Correlational data cannot establish cause and effect and laboratory research may have problems with ecological validity. Nonetheless, it is not daring to claim that television have some short term effects, such as an increase in aggressive display and fright. As long as an aggressive act does not hurt another child or the actor itself, however, one cannot claim that all role play with mild aggressive content is bad. Splashing water at each other, shooting with cap guns, or pretending to be Harry Potter fighting villains seem to be very harmless activities common in any ordinary childhood. There are also many differences in how children are affected by television violence. Because of the stereotyping in media and possibly due to genetic differences, boys are more likely to imitate aggressive behavior than girls. The evidence also suggests that there are developmental and individual differences on the extent for which television violence has an influence. Children with ADHD like symptoms, or children who watch television to a larger extent than others, may be more at risk. Children may also be more negatively influenced by realistic or real violence compared to fantasy violence.

Although there are established short term effects of exposure to TV violence, the long term effects are less evident. TV violence may have an impact on aggression and psychological distress, but children are also influenced by many other social and psychological factors. It seems obvious that exposure to real violence, such as bullying or abuse must have a more detrimental effect on children than exposure to TV violence. It is nonetheless recommended for parents to have some degree of control over their young child’s TV viewing and the content of it, and that children, especially those in the danger zone, are educated about how programs are made and what is real and pretend on television. Attempts with such a curriculum have been tried on emotionally disturbed children, with positive effects (e.g. Sprafkin, Gadow & Kant, 1988).

Distinguish Between Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour

Contrast Two Theories Explaining Altruism in Humans

Prosocial behavior is used within social psychology for every behavior that benefits others, such as caring, loving, helping, and feeling empathy. Altruism is a type of prosocial behavior, and according to evolutionary theory a behavior that reduces the fitness of the altruistic individual but increases the fitness of the individual receiving help (Okasha, 2008). On the face of it, altruism does not make much sense from an evolutionary point of view, as the behavior seems unlikely to have been transformed into an adaptation. Adaptations, which are driven by natural selection, are features especially important for an animal’s survival. It is believed by evolutionary psychologists that many psychological functions are adaptations. As altruism per definition decreases the fitness of individuals, genes influencing altruistic behavior should be less likely to be passed on to the next generation.

Altruism has posed a challenge to evolutionary theory. There have nevertheless been efforts to explain this behavior from a biological point of view. One such explanation is Reciprocal Altruism (RA), a model which which was developed by Trivers (1971). It basically assumees that individuals can be expected to behave altruistically if they believe that there is a chance that they can be in the same predicament and will need somebody’s else’s help in the future. Therefore you are more likely to act altruistically if you expect to meet the person you are helping again. For example, individuals in prairie dog colonies will give alarm calls if they see a predator approaching, even though it puts the calling prairie dog at risk (Sterelny and Griffiths, 1999). This behavior may be explained by RA. The callers warn the rest of the group because they expect to need to be warned by others in the future. Another example is the behavior of vampire bats. Vampire bats feed on blood, and can share it mouth to mouth to bats that have failed finding blood during their nightly hunt. This is needed, as vampire bats will begin to starve if they do not consume blood within 48 hours. (Wilkinson, 1985) According to a RA explanation individuals in a group of vampire bats expect to end up without blood during a hunt once in a while, and therefore share their blood in order to receive the same favor later on.

A hypothesis that differs greatly from RA is Batson’s Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis (EA). Batson recognizes that people sometimes help out of self interest, anxiety and fear, but that they often help out of empathy. Batson demonstrated this in a famous experiment. Participants listened to an interview of a girl who had been in a car accident and had both of her legs broken. One group of participants was asked to try to focus on how she was feeling. A second group of participants were not asked to be concerned about Carol’s feelings. After listening to the interview, participants were asked to share lecture notes with Carol. As a second independent variable, the experimenters varied the cost of not helping Carol. Participants in the high cost condition were told Carol would be in the same psychology class when she returned to school, whereas the low cost condition group was told that she would finish the class at home. The findings demonstrated that participants that were not encouraged to sympathize with Carol were more likely to help her if they were told that she would be participating in their class compared to if they were told she were not. In contrast, participants that had been told to emphasize with Carol were not influenced by the likelihood of seeing her in class. The logic behind the Carol experiment is that if helping behavior is influenced by pure self interest; helping should be more likely in the situation where participants risk embarrassment for not helping Carol. As this was not the case in the emphasizing condition, the findings suggest that empathy can sometimes motivate helping.

Naturally, the explanations of altruism differ between the theories. Whereas RA explains altruistic behavior as helping if one believes that there is a probability that one needs help in the future, EA suggests that we in some situations can be motivated by empathic concerns. In this sense, RA is more based on rational self interest compared to EA. Additionally, RA is arguably more reductionist than EA, because it focuses on self interest. EA, on the other hand, asserts that humans sometimes may act out of self interest and sometimes not. Paradoxically, it can also be claimed that RA is actually not a pure altruistic theory compared to EA, as the former has its basis in self interest and in increasing the fitness of the helping individual.

A second division between the explanations is the type of research they are based on. Whereas EA is based on experimental evidence on humans RA is mainly based on naturalistic observations of non-human animals and only in part on human research. RA in humans has been investigated by using the Prisoner’s dilemma. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game of cooperation between two players. It is in the best interest of the players to cooperate in the game, but because of lack of trust participants tend not to collaborate in single round games and thus lose collectively. However, if the players are playing the game repeatedly, they tend to be more cooperative (e.g. Axelrod & Hamilton 1981). This behavior is in line with predictions of RA. According to the model individuals tend to behave more helpful towards individuals they anticipate meeting again, such as in reiterated games, and are conversely more likely to cheat on people they do not expect to meet in the future, such as in single games.

A third distinction between the theories is their validity. It can be argued that EA has higher validity than RA, for several reasons. Firstly, the research supporting EA is mainly based on human research in contrast to RA, making the former more applicable to humans. Secondly, the ecological validity of the experimental research favoring RA in humans has lower ecological validity than experimental research favoring EA. For example, the scenario participants were presented in the Carol experiment is more realistic than the scenario presented in the prisoner dilemma games. Thirdly, there is more evidence challenging RA. The examples of reciprocal altruism that have been observed in the animal world may have alternative explanations. For instance, the apparent altruistic behavior of individuals in prairie dog colonies may actually be out of egoistic reasons rather than RA. As the alarm call causes the whole group to escape, this provides a distraction and may increase the chances of escape for the caller. Likewise, the observed behavior of vampire bats to donate blood to the less fortunate may be better explained by kin selection, a theory that states that we tend to give more help those that we are closer to genetically (Hamilton, 1964). Indeed, the data has suggested that vampire bats are more likely to share blood with relatives than non relatives. (Wilkinson, 1985)

Currently, EA seems to have more validity than RA. Due to the methodological weaknesses of the studies supporting either theory, one should however be careful in drawing too far reaching conclusions. Despite this precaution, this may still increase our understanding of altruism.

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